Learn about this topic in these articles:

Chinese music

…West Asian tradition is the fangxiang, a set of 16 iron slabs suspended in a wooden frame in the manner of the old sets of tuned stones. Gongs related to the present-day Chinese luo, with its slightly convex face, seem to have entered the Chinese musical scene before the 6th…

development of lithophones

…counterparts. But in China the fangxiang, with its 16 bars, is a metal imitation of the lithophone. Among important components of the gamelan are the saron, a trough metallophone depicted as early as about 800 ce on the Borobudur stupa (Buddhist monument), Java, and the frame metallophone gender, now usually…